for now, the only thing we're growing on this farm is kids - not the goat variety

Month: May 2013

We met Marcela upon arriving at our 2nd rental in Las Condes.† She was there with her 2nd daughter to greet us, show us around the apartment, how to work the washer, point in the direction of the nearest grocery etc.† She's energetic, sweet, very hospitable, and for whatever reason she took an interest in our family.

When we asked if she could recommend someone to help us with our Spanish, she volunteered.† She's occasionally come for an hour or two and just to talk with us.† She also took me grocery shopping.† While we were out, we took lunch to her daughters at school.† We met her dog and her housekeeper.

Next thing we knew she was inviting us to a combined birthday party for her 18 year old daughter and her mother.† I was sick at the time, but Marathon went with the three older children.

Marcela even helped us understand and recommended some changes to the contract for the apartment we were getting ready to lease.† And she reminded us to take photos of the apartment before we moved in.† In short, she was looking out for us like a mother hen.

We stayed in touch over the next few months and had them to our apartment for dinner.† She invited us to have Good Friday lunch with her extended family.† Being nominal Catholics, fish was on the menu, and Marcela's mother made her traditional fish soup.† It was delicious!

Here are Pablo (Marcela's husband), their oldest daughter Macarena, and Marcela's parents who live with them.† Macarena painted the picture in the background.

Here's Marcela and Pablo with their girls.

We stayed the afternoon and just sat around and talked.† Doodle and Rosebud played with old toys and climbed in and out of the empty swimming pool.

Rosebud lost her first tooth on Mother's Day.† That morning we took a picture of it because it was so very loose and because we were going to be out for the day.† I wanted to pull it for her, but she wanted to have none of that.

We hiked around Cerro Santa Lucia with VogelJoy (more on that in another post), then rode the metro to the La Florida mall.† While eating an apple there, Rosebud's tooth started bleeding, and Mrs.VogelJoy and I exchanged knowing glances.† When I looked at Rosebud again, the tooth was gone.† "Where's your tooth?!" I asked.

We mentioned that some new Canadian friends helped us celebrate Rosebud's birthday.† But did we mention that they're a family band?† They might even be kind of famous in Canada, performing at local fairs, events, and private parties, making appearances on radio programs...† They've even produced a couple of cds.

Terry brought his guitar to Rosebud's party.† Here they all come now!

They attracted quite a crowd with their songs when we were at the park.† It was spontaneous and fun.

You can learn more about their music and family band from their website.† They've got as much energy as you'd expect after viewing their videos.† They are homeschooling their three children and are in the midst of traveling around South America.† We got lucky enough to meet them through a mutual friend.

A couple of weeks ago we went to the Bicentennial Park, a long linear park along the river, with them.† We played soccer, marveled at the giant gold fish (I can't remember their real name) in the ponds, and watched a street performer (the kids climbed up to get a better view).

We then tagged along with them via the subway to circus practice.† Yep.† Circus practice - where you learn/practice the trapeze, silks, hoops, acrobatics, and pole...† Good stuff.† Difficult stuff.† Not that I tried, but the kids did.† Our camera was doing wonky things in the outdoor evening light, so we don't have many pictures.† And even though this post is about VogelJoy, here's Carman on the trapeze -- he did great for his first time.† (The group normally meets in a gym, but on this particular night, they met in the instructor's backyard.)

This is a video from a post back in 2007. This is me at age nine playing a tune from Vivaldi. I was going to re-learn it, and so we dug up this video. My recorder skills seem to have gotten better over these 6 years of not playing. After several tries, I was better than my 9-year old self.

Since then we have done some singing practice, and my ear for pitch, rhythm, and my lung control are much better than they were.

Rosebud's 6th birthday was a couple of weeks ago. Ever since we arrived in Chile she has been promising to invite her friends to her birthday party. In fact, she bribed one boy into letting her ride his bike by promising to invite him to her party. So, to make good on all the promises, we decided to have a party for her in the park behind our condominio.

A couple of days before her party we met a Canadian family of 5 who had recently arrived in Santiago. We invited them to come, and they offered to bring their guitar.

Along with the Canadian family, about 6 other kids came (not including 2 of my friends). We played Duck Duck Goose, played on the playground, opened presents, ate cake brownies and listened to kid music played by the Canadian family.

Here is a picture of the kids.

This is Rosebud and Sophie - both smiling at the other one's dad:)

Here is the Dad, Terry.

I love this picture of Rosebud!

Here's Rosebud opening her soda with her best friend Catalina ("Cata") looking on.

Here they're eating brownies. The colored things in the jar are candied peanuts.

Here is my HILARIOUS brother:) By the way, he did the streamers you see there behind him.

This was our gluten free/sugar free brownie. Well, except for the sprinkles:)

That is the Evil Robot, pulverized by Illustrator's various warp tools.

I made this as a "computer game" that Doodle and Rosebud loved. Under the text "choose you weapon" There was a panel containing all the warp tools. They would simply select one of them, and start destroying the robot. Once it had been reduced to a meaningless blob (such as this), I would simply copy in the fresh robot figure out of the clipboard and the fun would be resumed.